For First Time Total Comex Silver Drops Below 100 Million Ounces; Physical Deliverable Silver Under 28 Million Oz

The slow, steady, very predetermined and methodical depletion of Comex silver, which recently entered 6-sigma range for a perfectly random event, or is the preparation for a Hunt Bros squeeze, now that there is 32% less silver (27.9MM vs 41MM on April 19) than there was 2 months ago, is starting to become disturbing to anyone who can identify a flat line pointing northeast at -45 degrees. Contrary to promises from virtually everyone that the ongoing decline in registered silver is something very temporary, the perfectly diagonal chart below begs to differ with this naive and now disproven hypothesis. The culprit for today's decline to a new record low is Brink's warehouse, where there was a 9% draw down in both registered and eligible silver. In the meantime, registered silver has not posted an uptick in over 3 months. Amusingly this is happening even as the price of spot and futures silver continues to trend lower. We wonder at what point will the general public wake up to what is happening (hint: here): 25MM oz? 20MM oz? 10MM oz? 0? When Bloomberg writes an article how physical silver is the equivalent of Japanese off the charts safe purchases? Never?

First of all, the Comex and the bankers mutually masturbate each other on a daily basis, so one can be assured that any threat of default will be quickly resolved with no repercussions. Think about it... if the entire Wall Street complex can go insolvent and nothing major changes from it, do you actually think a blow-up in one small corner of the commodities market will lead to anything meaningful?

A potential COMEX default won't be the apocalyptic blow-up that all the doomers pray for. Price will temporarily surge, but then it'll fall back to earth.

The LME defaulted on nickel in 2006. And what happened? The price shot up, then quickly collapsed by over 50% in months. About 2 years later, nickel price had fallen by over 75%, and the LME is still the exchange it always was.

If a default were to occur, many cash settlements will be arranged at a price agreeable to the buyers, and interest will be charged daily on the short contracts until those shorts can deliver. Those shorts who still need to deliver will simply buy shares of SLV, take delivery, and pay off their Comex contracts. The SLV is so massive, it is a new depository, of sorts.

The only time to get concerned is if the price of SLV shoots to the moon, while its inventory get raided. Then I'll change my opinion.

Until then, all this garbage about a default at the Comex is just more doomer, conspiracy rhetoric, much like the "Crash JP Morgue" lunacy that was proven to be TOTAL BULLSHIT.

It's nothing more than a great story to get the doomer goons riled up. You guys may want to spend some time reading about Buffet, Phibro and the great silver scheme of 1997. Creating the illusion of inadequate supply in the silver market has been replayed many, many times.

The SLV is a new depository; good observation. Comes under the general heading of keeping up with the times. I just love these experts who have never traded or owned a Comex contract in their lives who are just certain that this time something really important will happen during delivery week. The Comex has been having delivery weeks since most of these blog educated loonies were in junior high school.

You haven't thought your way through this. Silver is used in every computer electronic made from CD-ROMS to the circuitry on a motherboard, so it's one of the most important precious metals known to man. Silver is also presently more rare than gold, there are very limited stockpiles above ground now. For 60 years the US government sold its huge stock piles of silver on the market for less than it could be profitably mined for; that ran out in 2007. China's industrialization has increased silver demand by 4 fold in the last decade.

Then there is the monetary aspect of silver, both gold and silver are the mortal enemy of fiat currency, their rise casts doubt on the efficacy of an ever increasingly debased dollar. Silver's rise may well shake the world's faith in the dollars soundness, why do you think JPM and HSBC have taken huge short positions on it to keep it down? For the hell of it?

Utah just returned both gold and silver as legal tender within the state, 13 other states have similar legislation on the table presently to do the same thing. Then there is the rest of the world, many countries peoples who could not buy silver when the Hunt brothers rushed to silver in the late 70's can now. China only recently has allowed it's people to invest in silver, 1/3rd of the earth now has ability to invest in silver. Their attitude about silver isn't like peoples in the US. Gold and silver are considered favorable in China, both are deeply ingrained in their culture, and China use to have a silver standard until the 1940's. So where do you come up with this bovine you speak of?

It was the first coined money and has been money for 5000 years. Utah's new implementation of gold and silver as legal tender has even worked out a method to let people use a debit card for purchases. I see no reason why we can't use silver; if the country got smart we could revalue both gold and silver, issue serial numbers for every microgram, and let people use their debit cards. The transaction would pass serial numbers and there you have it, real money with intrinsic value built in.

My question is do you want something that is essentially consumed by industry to be used as a currency? I understand it worked great in the previous 5000 years before it started to be put in computers. The great thing about gold is that the pool of gold bullion doesn't change much (no significant consumption) at least as far as I know. Maybe that's wrong. If the pool of silver does change significantly due to industry use/consumption, doesn't that make it less useful as currency? Or is it not consumed at a significant rate by industry considering the pool of silver?

For the long term you may be right, but for now and at least next few years it would be wise to hold at least some the metal in your coffers. Gold however has few industrail uses and wouls still make a good form of sound money folowing the same path I mention above.

First of all, the Comex and the bankers mutually masturbate each other on a daily basis, so one can be assured that any threat of default will be quickly resolved with no repercussions. Think about it.

They'll wake up when it's just a little bit too late. Of course some of the more aware and alert have already been awakening, and a few more will, but the general public are in dreamland.dedicated hosting

I already know I have more silver than SLV. It just would be funny if the day came when I had more than the CRIMEX. I personally think that KITCO fiasco was more of an attempt of raiding their physical pools of gold/silver than a tax issue. It seems to me that the PTB are getting desperate and are attempting at killing off anyone who is not part of their core group before letting the system implode on itself. I can see the day come when the government will make it illegal to buy physical silver, for our own good of course. Followed by physical gold... as you know, this stuff is way to speculative. But, paper gold aand silver will always be for sale of course. As that is not speculative... no... no...

The Treasury document says it would cost about $15 million to conduct an audit. The process would take about 30 minutes to verify the gold content of each bar, or 350,000 man hours, to do that would take 400 people working for six months, according to the document.

$15 million??? The Fed is printing $140 million a day. That’s less than nine minutes of Fed printing.The Federal government spends $3.5 trillion a year. $15 million is less than a minute and a half of government spending. Obama’s Porkulus was $800 billion. $15 million is less than 0.002% of Porkulus.

And 400 people working for six months sounds like shovel-ready jobs to me. Wasn’t the Obama Administration for stimulus before they were against it?

Treasury is full of shit. First, $15 mil/350,000 hrs = $43 per hour. I bet people will do it for less. Second, that 30 minutes per bar sounds like a full assay i.e. drilling each bar. I bet a good first estimate could be made by weighing the bars and using ultrasound. Would take maybe 2 minutes per bar.

I'll bet there'd be a load of curious people around the world who'd be prepared to work on the audit for FREE, just to find the answer to a question that's been on their minds for decades. $15 million my ass.

FT. KNOX AUDIT: Picture an enclosed building the size of the superdome. This Ft. Knox building is pitch black and seemingly empty. Way off about 150 yards in the NE corner you see what looks like a small lamp on top of a table. You calmly stroll over with your flashlight brushing away cobwebs and dodging bats as you meander forward. You finally arrive along with your TSA goon escort who still has his hands in your pants. You come upon an old scratched up cobweb infested desk and immediately under the glow of the flickering lamp you find the entirety of what's left of the U. S. Gold Reserves, two 10 gram pamp suisse gold bars and one bar is missing its assay card. The news hits Wall Street and gold falls $80 the next trading day.

Random sampling is all they need to do! Get a QA person to give them the numbers but I bet that 100% screen $ 15 Million price tag is just a smokescreen to get out of the task of proving they have gold. Can anyone scream FRAUD!

Random sampling is all they need to do! Get a QA person to give them the numbers but I bet that 100% screen $ 15 Million price tag is just a smokescreen to get out of the task of proving they have gold. Can anyone scream FRAUD!

Random sampling is all they need to do! Get a QA person to give them the numbers but I bet that 100% screen $ 15 Million price tag is just a smokescreen to get out of the task of proving they have gold. Can anyone scream FRAUD!

Random sampling is all they need to do! Get a QA person to give them the numbers but I bet that 100% screen $ 15 Million price tag is just a smokescreen to get out of the task of proving they have gold. Can anyone scream FRAUD!

Random sampling is all they need to do! Get a QA person to give them the numbers but I bet that 100% screen $ 15 Million price tag is just a smokescreen to get out of the task of proving they have gold. Can anyone scream FRAUD!

Sure it's 5 bucks to get it out. Then you have to process, refine, cast, distribute. When it's sitting in the vault of the (solvent) bank here, assayed and all, it's at least 20 FRN. Also, most silver is mined as a by product (of copper mostly), so if/when the economy tanks, there's going to be less copper mining. But there still will be a demand for solar, ergo, price goes up.

Yo, bitch. Give it a rest with your $5 bullshit. Gold extraction resembles petroleum in that the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. A decade ago the average cost of extracting an ounce of gold from the ground stood at a little over $200. In 2010 it hit $857, says GFMS (http://www.gfms.co.uk/whoweare_background.htm) though this figure depends in part on the gold price. When gold was $200 an ounce, nuggets that cost $800 to extract stayed buried.

Mules & Ligers. One is actually extremely important to the business of humping large quantities of guns, drugs, and even humanitarian aid over mountainous terrain where well maintained roads do not exist. The other will be actually extremely valuable in any post-collapse banker-baiting bread-and-circus enterprise.

We used to just have it laying around as a 100oz door stops now because the pump is now officially on again I'll have to go to home depot and buy one of those door wedges to replace the last100 ounces bricks I sold at 49.10/ounce and bought back at 32.60. Thanks BTW

Only my tradeable silver that is. But still guys can't we just have Armegeddon first before you pump the hell out of it and then go to the grocery store to trade it in?

What I find interesting is that just at year-end the silver in the COMEX drops dramatically, only to rebound again early in the new year--like it is being transferred somewhere else for a formal audit, after which it is whooshed back to the COMEX warehouse. I wonder how many different groups "own" that silver?

"London" is rather vague especially given the differences between the LBMA, the City, and the BoE.

There is are several big pots of silver in London. Comex is the weak hand, whose folding could trigger an exodus, but their hand is most likely much stronger than 28 million ounces if a gun is put to their head.

However, the grand canyon was formed by a persistent drip over a long period of time.

Oh, so now you're changing your definition of "default." If the "default" already happened, and has happened every month since December, why do you keep parroting that a default is imminent? 50/50 chance of default by July? You've just changed your definition of default to excuse the fact that you've been parroting the threat of default for a year or more.

You truly have NO idea how the Comex works. The Comex is a pricing mechanism, it's an exchange. The Comex does not need to deliver the silver. The sellers, and brokers who represent the sellers do.

By the way, the reason paper is being delivered is because that's what the buyers fucking want. The vast majority of contract holders are just paper investors, who are perfectly content flipping the paper for profit. It's only the doomer goons who want to put their $400 worth of stupid coins under their lettuce patch.

You seriously need to STFU, and stop spreading your disinformation to everyone.

No, it has always been the same. The default will just become total and public as they RUN OUT of silver in their inventory.

Jesus Christ, how do you survive in the world with your level of complete ignorance? Yes, the sellers have to deliver the silver, but the trades are INSURED BY THE EXCHANGE. If the seller can't come up with the silver, the exchange has to make up the difference. Further, the inventory of the sellers is counted IN THE COMEX VAULTS. This is exactly what we are talking about. Sure, there are a lot of paper trades, a given contract might change hands a hundred times prior to expiry, but at the end of the day, it winds up in the hands of someone who wants to take delivery, and it is created by someone who wanted to hedge production (ie they want to deliver real, physical silver).

And more ignorant lies. If they just wanted paper, they would roll their positions before the end of the front month. In order to stand for delivery, they have to pony up a bunch of cash. Why would a paper trader do that? These guys trade on LEVERAGE. Why would they divest themselves of leverage just to get more paper, when they could roll it for free?

Get the fuck out of here, RNR. You have no clue how exchanges work. You just keep registering new names so you can try, try again to discredit me. Guess what, idiot? You can't. Because I know what the fuck I am talking about.

The Powers that be....and that is not us boys...are getting their treasures out of dodge as fast as they can...this will speed up as the boys get scared that they might be left out without any of their stolen treasure....they have the computers tanking the price everyday...and the good stuff is leaving the barn....hmmmm..I think we have two months....

I predict that July will come and go, with nary a ripple--just like all the other times the Comex' imminent demise gets discussed. How can you guys claim it's all about to blow, based on their "numbers"??

They can do whatever they want--it's their casino. Get it through your heads, and quit betting on some hypothetical (and always just out of reach)"physical" windfall.

The price of silver will rise perfectly well on its own steam, over time. The Comex shenanigans are just a sideshow--don't get caught up in it. They can keep their games up there as long as they want.

hey, i'm all for hoping sliver goes to the moon too, but freeman DOES have a point about 'casinos' and 'rules'. when the scumbag corporations running the vegas casinos into the ground decided they needed to squeeze out a few more points of ROI, what'd they do? why, they *changed the 100+-year-old payouts on blackjack* is all. single-deck. blackjack paid 1.5 to 1. always has, always did. then the MBA boys decided that no, that wasn't fair enough to them and their banker friends, so they cut the payout to 1.2-to-1. that's a HUGE whack on the long-term run. don't like it? tough shit.

then, just to make sure we all knew who the boss was and who the bitches are, they posted up on their neon signs, "New Payouts! By Popular Demand!"

sure sounds like the crimex to ME. "when the going gets tough, The Tough Change The Rules." they've done it (a lot) before - 5 times in 9 days, IIRC. why wouldn't anyone think they'll do it again as needed?

When they change the rules, the players go elsewhere. Same will happen here. Even if it means opening a new futures exchange.

Thing is, we have another one now for gold. Wouldn't be much of a stretch for them to start trading silver futures as well.

But yes, the rule changes will drive the paper price to zero. Until the new exchanges open. Then all the volume shifts, and the price explodes as true price discovery is had (in the environment of an industrial user panic).

Those users who hedge on the COMEX beware. You'll be buying from us, and soon. And at prices that will split your skulls.

Clearly in mid-April, big money called in their physical silver. This pissed off TPTB so badly that they retaliated with the "Osama Shakeout of 2011" which crushed the paper price. Big money is usually right.

people are buying gold and silver becuase they see that the idiots in Washington, the Republicans! are going to blow it all up! they are looking for the end of the world! the debt ceiling is the first domino in their plan to end the world! LOL!!

Totally agree. The powers that be still have several aces up their sleaves, and will hit the price several more times along the way. But as Jim Rogers has been saying, the path with least resistance will be upwards - which is good. We want a steady orderly rise.

He hasn't posted a hot babe in awhile. My theory is that he's simply a troll - and knows that was the only part of his posts that people looked forward to. Therefore, he's taken the only joy out of his posts so that he can increase the pain of reading his drivel.

In fact, he has not posted hot babes in a very, very long time. Even though I visit this site for other reasons (seriously), I am, I confess, disappointed every time he posts. I think he is doing it to spite me or something.

InbredRobot! I thought you'd never (not) open your pie hole... I understand what you are getting at with your comments. You are just blatently pointing out the obvious. The rule makers are in charge. Until they are not. Your two minute look in the future (and markets as well) seems to be your downfall. Yes paper silver currently drives price and I use it to my advantage to purchase. So far I have done well. It can drop to $20 and I will laugh all the way to the coin shop. If you have not noticed there is very little to be done by way of charts or by expecting the rules to stay put. What I am saying is we are experiencing psyhcological price point at this stage. I sat on the sidelines while the price popped up and back down. When it was floundering in the mid thirtys I realized the mindset and mental block I had set for myself (for me anyway) was four shiny coins for a benny vs. three. This was a big hurdle. So I looked at it another way. What is the average price per oz I would feel comfortable holding? For me it was $25. So I gave myself a little wiggle room. Now if the price falls below that I will buy every fucking oz within reach. There is my game plan. So suck it. I'll take my stash & you take yours- trial by fire...